SethInMI

The fact the thread recently turned to include semi automated cars like Tesla is the only reason I can think of that you would think anyone here is saying automated cars are common. No one here is trying to predict when fully autonomous cars will become ubiquitous throughout the world. It's enough for conversation purposes to discuss when they will become common in certain parts of the USA. Waymo is planning to have fully autonomous taxis available to anyone in Phoenix by the end of the year. I would say they are deep into beta testing. In short, nothing in your post makes any sense. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

I also see there is a transcript of the interview https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=611225541 POLLAN: Exactly right. The drugs foster new perspectives on old problems. You know, one of the things our mind does is tell stories about ourselves. And if you're depressed, you're being told a story, perhaps, that you're worthless, that no one, you know, could possibly love you, you're not worthy of love, that life will not get better. And these stories, which are enforced by our egos, really, trap us in these ruminative loops that are very hard to get out of. They're very destructive patterns of thought. What the drugs appear to do is disable for a period of time the part of the brain where the self talks to itself. And it's called the default mode network. And it's a structure - it's not a structure. It's a group of structures that connect parts of the cortex - the evolutionarily most-recent part of the brain - to deeper levels where emotion and memory reside. And it's a very important hub in the brain, and lots of important things happen there - self-reflection and rumination, time travel - it's where we go to think about the future or the past - and theory of mind, the ability to imagine the mental states of other beings - and I think most importantly, the autobiographical self. It's the part of the brain, it appears, where we incorporate things that happen to us - new information - with a sense of who we are, who we were and who we want to be. And that's where these stories get generated. And these stories can be really destructive. They trap us. And what happens - and this was a big surprise with the modern period of research - that - was that this network is downregulated. It sort of goes offline for a period of time. And that's why you experience this dissolution of self or ego, which is a quite - can be a terrifying or a liberating thing depending on your mindset. And this is what allows people, I think, to have those new perspectives on themselves, to realize that they're - they needn't be trapped in those stories, and they might actually be able to write some new stories about themselves. And that's what's liberating, I think, about the experience when it works. GROSS: So what is the state now of the psychological, therapeutic use of psychedelics? It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2018/05/15/611301978/fresh-air-for-may-15-2018-michael-pollan-on-the-new-science-of-psychedelics?showDate=2018-05-15 Last month Terry had Michael Pollan on to talk about his new book, "The new science of psychedelics". Interesting listen, I am sure the book would answer your questions. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

You are calling Tesla Autopilot a "testing phase", when it is an actual product. The key question behind the one "should we even allow semi-autonomous cars" is even if their drivers can be inattentive, do the cars still perform more safely than human only drivers? And I think we need to segregate the categories of "testing fully autonomous cars with a safety driver" from "selling semi-autonomous cars". There is no good way to full autonomous cars without some form of safety driver, and the track record of that testing has been really good. Waymo appears to be in the home stretch of developing its product, so hopefully in a few more years this debate will be moot. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

interesting article about the accident rate of waymo cars, both at-fault and not at fault. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-safe-are-self-driving-cars_us_5908ba48e4b03b105b44bc6b from the article: Typical experienced human drivers (excluding teens / early 20s ages) are are involved in ~200-400 crashes per million miles. Google has 1 at fault accident in 2 million miles, so MUCH safer. However google cars are involved in ~600 crashes per million miles, far higher than typical average. Most of these are the google car getting rear-ended. Theory is Google cars stop for things unexpectedly or abruptly, and get rear ended as a result.

Queen Mary cost in 1934 3,500,000 pounds = 315,000,000 dollars in 2017 Saturn V launch cost (for the vehicle itself per wikipedia) in 1969 110,000,000 dollars = 763,877,000 dollars today. So I got ~2x. Shows how cheap (good) SpaceX is that the Falcon Heavy launch cost is only $90,000,000 or so. That is an order of magnitude less than the projected SLS launch costs. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

You don't bring back concrete rebound hammer. Concrete rebound hammer will bring itself back when it feels like it. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

I wonder about his accounting. I can't imagine that the production cost of single Saturn V was 20x the Queen Mary. An impressive prediction list though, not only for what he got right, but what he didn't get wrong. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

True. In the USA his memory will fade, but I feel it will live on in the UK, by both being a smaller place, and the unique nature of the crime making it a good conversation piece (can you mess with a rig and make it look like an accident is a conversation I have had before just shooting the shit in the packing area). It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

I feel like he will become a skydive legend. Like DB Cooper or fictional Truman Sparks or Bohdi, his name will be a bonfire staple, enough that people will remember. It only takes one person to post "Hey remember that guy, his release date just passed, wonder where he is" and refresh everyone's memory. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

The soviets had been pushing the germans back for most of 1943 and 1944. The normany invasion helped of course, but IMHO they would have won anyway. I am thankful the allies did invade france of course. kallend didn't start this thread to talk about the eastern front, so I dont want to derail, but I think most americans don't realize how huge and how horrible the eastern front war was. In 1943 there were about 10 million soldiers fighting; it boggles my mind. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the Allies had not landed in France. The Soviets would have defeated Germany anyway, so I assume that Germany would have been completely under their influence, and probably other countries as well. Googling that question would I am sure get me 100's of well thought out responses, as I know re-fighting WWII is a popular topic... It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

It is an interesting problem. Can one devise a pass / fail test to certify that an autonomous car has met some safety standard, so is no more dangerous than some reference? The problem is you want the test to be repeatable and representative, so that all cars are subject to the same test conditions, but you don't want those conditions to always be the same, or the "teaching the test" problem occurs. Of course that would be far easier if the environment could be a simulated one. As Bill pointed out, there is work do generate the sensor data. For camera based systems, images of the virtual environment would need to be generated (looking just like a CGI movie). For lidar systems, point clouds would be created instead. For radar, radar data. etc. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

https://www.gocomics.com/bloom-county/2015/11/09 Both our avatars are homage to Calvin and Hobbes. Two great strips for sure. Bloom County is still going, on FB. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

Yeah, I don't think they will abandon the no-LCD display price point. My assumption is the session replacement will be thinner, look a little more pancake like. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

Interesting. I can't find any concrete information about a session replacement, except for this from GoPro CEO Nick Woodman from Nov 2017: Reading between the lines, they will have a new Session style camera coming out some time this year, but it will be even smaller. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

from: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/uber-finds-deadly-accident-likely-caused-by-software-set-to-ignore-objects-on-road "Uber has determined that the likely cause of a fatal collision involving one of its prototype self-driving cars in Arizona in March was a problem with the software that decides how the car should react to objects it detects, according to two people briefed about the matter. The car’s sensors detected the pedestrian, who was crossing the street with a bicycle, but Uber’s software decided it didn’t need to react right away. That’s a result of how the software was tuned. Like other autonomous vehicle systems, Uber’s software has the ability to ignore “false positives,” or objects in its path that wouldn’t actually be a problem for the vehicle, such as a plastic bag floating over a road. In this case, Uber executives believe the company’s system was tuned so that it reacted less to such objects. But the tuning went too far, and the car didn’t react fast enough, one of these people said." This makes sense to me. It was not the sensors, but the software. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

Couple comments: 1. Many developers would argue that Open Source is better / more secure / less hack-able than Closed Source. Their argument is that the more scrutiny and eyes are on the source code the better as the result will be more high quality and have fewer bugs. 2. It sounds like Comcast and Independent are developing software, a health care software service platform. They claim it will be open source, and I can see that as possible as they know a closed source system will get fewer takers, and building heath care software platforms it is not the main business for either company, so Open Sourcing it won't be the death of them. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

Observe where the engine is located. Now observe which window was knocked out. Well damn. That's what I get for ignoring air resistance in my detailed trajectory calculations. :). The REAL takeaway from this incident is "don't worry about it. The odds of getting sucked out of a plane to your death are still lower than, well, most other forms of death you don't worry about either" It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

The funny thing to me is we refer to idiots as mouthbreathers. In this case if you are too dumb to put the mask over your nose and you are actually a mouthbreather, it works out for you. The true takeaway for me from this incident is not "put your mask over your nose", but "don't sit by the window in a row in line with the engine fan" It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

The few times I've jumped in Belgium I did not need to buy additional 3rd party insurance or a membership. Apparently the 3rd party coverage with USPA membership was enough. YMMV. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

Wow. I would need 1k jumps to jump at my current 1.5wl, or about 500 more than I have. I can see doctoring a log book for a few jumps, but not that many. I would be nervous about planning to do a bunch of jumping with my gear even if I had a verbal advance assurance from the DZ that the rule would not be applied to me. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

I am not sure I agree with the revocation, hopefully it is temporary. I say this because the system concept of testing a automatic system with a human backup appeared to work as designed. The automatic system did not perform as expected, but it appears as if the safety driver (although not perfect) would not have been able to change the outcome. What if this had happened to Google back in 2009 when it was getting started? Would that have been stopped safety driver testing for a month? a year? a decade? The automatic car in test has to at least perform predictably enough so that the human monitor can step in, but it does not have to be perfect. The human monitor does need to pay attention and this maybe the biggest flaw in this style of testing. Who or what is monitoring the monitor? It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

They are two very separate questions, 1. what can you land safely when you are conscious and have use of your arms, and 2. what will land you safely when you are not. For 1, experienced skydivers are comfortable landing something 1 size smaller, and you really wont see people jumping reserves two sizes smaller than the main. For 2, there are so many unknowns it is hard to make a decision. How big is big enough? What change in WL gives me the largest step in survivablity? How does the fact that I am already seriously injured affect my landing survival chances? For me, I don't expect to survive an incapacitated landing (at 1.5 reserve WL). I do think it is still useful to have an AAD, as there are a range of impacts that could stun or daze you but still give you enough time (30-40sec) to get your shit together and flare. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

Yeah I watched it and I agree that the Uber car and Uber safety driver bear no responsibility in her death. That said, if this happened during the day, and you watched her on video cross into the 1st lane then enter the cars lane and get hit, would you not wonder why the car didn't even slow down when the woman entered the 1st lane? Because from what Bill V and I are saying, the car's LIDAR sensor was not affected by the dark, so it should have had given the car some warning that something was coming. In Michigan, we have to worry about deer crossing the road, or in the road. I want my autonomous car to (when it is practical and safe) to slow down if deer are heading into the road, not just smash into them like they are not even there. So the way things are at present, I am saying I want a Google Car not an Uber Car. It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".